


we better make a start

by peakvincent (createadisaster)



Category: Chef RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-26
Updated: 2019-02-26
Packaged: 2019-11-05 21:23:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17926607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/createadisaster/pseuds/peakvincent
Summary: The thing is, Claire’s landlord is useless. He’s been useless through the lightswitch that just stopped turning the lights on, and the leak in her bathroom sink, and the time one of her kitchen cabinet doors just plain fell off. He was useless when the AC stopped working last summer and he’ll be useless for the draft of cold air from the fire escape this winter. Today, he is useless because the radiator is clanking again.“Just get in there with a toolbox and see what’s what,” Brad suggests, arranging his station and surveying his produce with a meticulous eye.“I don’t have a toolbox,” says Claire. Brad sets down his onion and gives her an incredulous look, and that’s when she knows she’s in trouble.





	we better make a start

**Author's Note:**

  * For [acetonebabe (ifthesuncomesup)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ifthesuncomesup/gifts).



> happy birthday to my #1 scarf gf alice acetonebabe!!! she's really the best of them. when she first told me about this concept i think she was envisioning washer/dryer repairs and hopefully she can forgive the absence. i love you! happy happy birthday!!
> 
> thanks to allie longnationalnightmare for the reading, cheerleading, radiator advice, and very impressive and helpful memory of the bon appitit canon.

The thing is, Claire’s landlord is useless. He’s been useless through the lightswitch that just stopped turning the lights on, and the leak in her bathroom sink, and the time one of her kitchen cabinet doors just plain fell off. He was useless when the AC stopped working last summer and he’ll be useless for the draft of cold air from the fire escape this winter.

Today, he is useless because the radiator is clanking again, and she hasn’t called him and she isn’t even going to, because, well, her apartment is the right temperature so he isn’t going to do anything about it anyway. She’s been telling the test kitchen about it, because it’s starting to grate, how there’s one thing after another and none of them are really _quite_ worth solving.

“Just get in there with a toolbox and see what’s what,” Brad suggests, arranging his station and surveying his produce with a meticulous eye. 

“I don’t _have_ a toolbox,” says Claire. Brad sets down his onion and gives her an incredulous look, and that’s when she knows she’s in trouble.

-

Brad has a toolbox. Brad has a toolbox, and he’s taken it with him on the train from New Jersey. Brad has a toolbox, and he carried it into Claire’s favorite bakery to pick up bagels for them. Brad has a toolbox, and it’s open on the rug of Claire’s apartment, while he sits with his knees crossed, inspecting the radiator intently.

The radiator, because it is now and always conspiring against Claire, has not clanked since he’s walked in the door. 

-

The radiator stays silent while Brad lies on his back at what has to be a painful angle. His head and shoulders are crammed under the sink. One leg is bent at the knee and the other is actually spilling out of the room and into the hall, because he just is too big to even lie on her bathroom floor. 

Claire has never had an issue with the size of her bathroom before. It has never seemed small before. Having Brad in her apartment is making everything seem a little smaller, making her home into a space she doesn’t quite recognize.

His shirt is riding up a little bit. Claire carefully avoids looking at the stripe of exposed belly and asks for probably the third time, “Are you sure you’re alright? I can call a plumber for this.”

“I’ve got it, Claire,” Brad tells her, weird and muffled. She’s standing in the hallway and leaning over him into the room. “I’m almost done. Hey, c’mere, I’ll show you.”

“Come _where_ ,” says Claire, and it’s a reasonable question, but he just scoffs and kind of kicks the leg in the hallway at her and so she steps over him, crouches beside him, tries to crane her neck to see what he’s doing under the sink.

“This is fully insane,” she tells him. She’s trying very hard not to touch him but it really just isn’t possible; they’re crammed into a tiny space, her spine is at an angle she didn’t know she could do, and she can’t even really see anything. 

“It’s also done leaking,” he says, and shows her what to do if it happens again. She watches his hands working and doesn’t remember anything he says.

-

He repairs the broken hinges on her cabinet, plus he gets her closet door aligned back on its sliding track and spackles a hole in the wall (even as she insists she _can_ do that herself and just was waiting for a good rainy Saturday to get to it). The morning turns to afternoon. They make lunch together in the kitchen. The radiator stubbornly does not make a sound, but as they cook and talk and move around each other easy as anything, Claire forgets to mind.

-

“You know, Saffitz, I’m startin’ to think your radiator’s never clanked a day in its life,” Brad says, amused, reaching past her to neatly steal her beer off the counter and take a sip. “I think you might be malignin’ the innocent.”

“That thing has it out for me,” she announces, watches his big hand tilt the bottle, then set it back down. “That one’s mine.”

“You don’t pay your repairmen? Beer’s cheaper than the goin’ rate, you know,” he counters. “Besides, I finished mine already.”

“Well, you didn’t repair my radiator,” she says, “so maybe you only get the one.”

“Radiator’s fine,” says Brad, “Silent night over there. All is calm, all is bright.”

“All is _not_ calm,” she says, can’t hold back the giggle, “The second you leave it’s going to start clanking again, I swear.”

“Hearing things, Saffitz,” says Brad, grinning his big dumb grin at her, and picks the bottle back up.

“I could just get you another one if you want it,” she says, “I guess you _did_ fix the sink.”

“And the cabinet,” he says cheerfully. “Besides, I don’t need another one. I have this one.”

“The cabinet _was_ fixed, I fixed that one myself, just like I got that beer myself—” Claire’s laughing again, defending herself as best she can against the unfortunate truth that her cabinet had been held together with the screws she’d found from her last bookshelf purchase and a little bit of hope.

“Oh, oh, she fixed it herself, that’s why it creaked when ya opened it and the hinges weren’t on straight,” Brad says, and he’s laughing too, “Fixed it with all the tools she keeps in a plastic bag, I bet—”

“Don’t knock the plastic bag, it keeps them in one _place_ —”

_CLANK_ goes the radiator, and shuts them both up for a second.

“Brad! That’s the clank!” Claire exclaims, and she’s never been so excited to hear it after a morning of teasing, and now she’s laughing because she was _right_ , “I _told_ you so, who’s maligning the innocent _now_ —”

Brad’s laughing too, and then he leans in and kisses her.

Claire is so startled she pulls back on instinct. “Oh,” she says, looking up at him. She can’t settle on any part of his face—she meets his eyes for a moment and it sends her reeling so she looks at his mouth instead and _that_ certainly isn’t better. He’d been smiling, a moment ago.

“I—sorry,” says Brad and his nose, the only safe part of his face. “Is that not—?” 

“No,” she says, again, just instinct, too quick, and she immediately and miserably hopes it didn’t come out unkind. “I mean, no.”

“Alright,” says Brad. He is still standing very close to her. She does not want him to back away and is sure that he’s about to. “No worries, Saffitz, a guy misread—“

“No worries,” she agrees quickly. He is so goddamn tall. She’s still looking up at him and his hand was on her neck just a second ago, where is it, it was light as a feather and his thumb was on her throat, just right, and now he’s not touching her anymore.

She had one beer. She’s not drunk. The room is spinning. 

“So,” Brad says, finally stepping back, pushing his sleeves up to his elbows. “What else did you say? The ice machine hasn’t been working?”

“Oh,” says Claire, “Um. Right. Yeah. No, I mean, it works, it just. Clunks.” 

“Well it’s just saying hello, isn’t it, you don’t gotta crush it’s spirit,” says Brad, and he’s trying too hard, Claire can feel how hard he’s trying, and she needs to play along, needs to hope against hope that maybe a guy misread and it’s no worries and that is that.

“I just don’t know if we speak the same language,” Claire explains. “The ice machine.”

“Show some multiculturalism; maybe you should learn,” he says, with his back to her, opening the freezer. She watches his arms.

-

The rest of the day is almost normal. Brad leaves before dinner and Claire enjoys her new and improved kitchen cabinet and bathroom sink. It’s not until Sunday night that the radiator clanks and it hits Claire all at once, that Brad kissed her and she has to go to _work_ tomorrow and Brad _kissed_ her. 

She flops onto her back and covers her face with a pillow. No worries is not going to work.

-

Brad smiles at her when she gets to work, and it’s normal and fine. He’s filming that day and they chat at some point, him calling to her across the test kitchen like he always does, and she bets that’ll make it into the video. That feels okay, feels safe, with twelve feet of counters and coworkers in between them. She keeps her distance, maybe, a little more than usual, but they’re talking and laughing and it feels like it could be okay.

-

It is not okay. By the end of the week, Claire is working on a new video, tasked with making Doritos. Claire doesn’t even _like_ Doritos. In fact, Doritos are kind of gross, and her chips keep puffing up all wrong, and the flavor isn’t right, and this stupid video was supposed to be a breeze and instead, everything is going terribly.

Brad’s been circling around all video, and that’s what normal is, or it’s what normal _was_ , a week ago, before he _kissed_ her. He’s trying to be helpful, like he always is, and she’s doing her best to keep it light, to meet him at his level—but he’s just so _there_. He keeps having good ideas and the first one is helpful and the second one was alright and by the third one she’s considering clobbering him with her baking sheet.

The dehydrator isn’t really working and so the cheese coating outside isn’t coming together, and she’s been poking at it _quietly_ , biting back the whine that apparently will bring Brad running to her side. She can _fix_ it. And she could have fixed the cabinet, too, and maybe should have just done _that_ herself, and then all of a sudden he’s back at her elbow, reaching over her for the machine.

“Here, let me get in there—” and suddenly she can’t handle him for another second, and basically yanks the dehydrator away from him like he’s trying to steal her purse, twists her body so her back’s to him. 

“I don’t need you to fix it, Brad!” she finds herself snapping over shoulder, loud enough that Andy turns towards them, an alarmed look on his face, and Vincent is wincing from behind the camera. “I got it, okay, it’s fine!”

Brad puts his hands up, palms facing her. “Was just trying to help, Claire,” he says. His face has gone freaky blank, no jokes about Half-Sour, no nothing.

“I don’t need your help!” She knows she’s digging herself deeper into this hole, hates that the camera is running and hoping it’ll be edited out of the video like she wants to edit it out of _today_. “Seriously, Brad, it’s fine. I’ll figure it out.”

-

She figures it out. 

“Brad, do you want to try the Doritos? I think they came out okay.” It’s an apology, a peace offering, and she knows before she finishes the question that it isn’t really good enough.

“Kinda in the middle of something, Claire,” he says from across the kitchen, barely even looking up.

-

Claire doesn’t _need_ Brad to critique her Doritos. He never really says anything nice anyway; he was probably just going to tell her the cheese dust doesn’t come off your fingers enough or the crunch isn’t quite right or the triangles are too sharp and that’s not really how Doritos are shaped, and she doesn’t need to hear any of it, because they came out _fine_ , even Chris said so.

She makes another batch. The crunch is better and the coating comes off on her fingers. She doesn’t offer one to Brad, because he looks like he’s in the middle of something.

-

She probably shouldn’t have snapped at him, but he probably shouldn’t have _kissed_ her. She’s on her way home, and the train is packed, and she accidentally makes eye contact with a woman standing by the doors. 

_He shouldn’t have kissed me without asking,_ she wants to yell across the car at her, _haven’t you ever been there, where somebody kisses you before you’ve had a chance to decide how you feel about it? Not that you felt_ bad _about it but you just hadn’t been given enough time to consider all your options?_

The other woman looks down at her phone. Claire gets off the train a few stops early and walks the rest of the way home. The air does _not_ clear her mind.

-

The radiator clanks all weekend and Claire doesn’t get any sleep. 

-

“I just don’t understand why it’s so hard to understand we all share this space,” Claire says loudly to no one in particular. “I was trying to get my cranberries for this tart and they weren’t where I left them.”

She can tell she’s got _that tone_ in her voice, the whine that always made her sisters exchange looks with each other and start to ignore her. Chris is too professional to treat her _quite_ that much like a little sister, but she sees him glance at Carla in a way she does not especially care for.

“I mean, it’s fine,” she says, “I just think everyone should be a little more aware of the constraints of the walk-in.”

-

No one listened, obviously, because the produce order has come in and no one unpacked it, and she’s had to climb over a cardboard box _and_ a package of paper towels to to get to the back corner where she _knows_ she left her dough to chill. It is not there. 

Claire takes a deep breath. She counts to ten.

When she turns around, Brad is opening the door with another cardboard box in his arms.

She should have counted to fifteen.

“Oh, sorry Claire, need to get past me before I start unpacking?” asks Brad.

“No,” she says, a little short, then sighs. “I’m trying to find something.”

“Well, just let me know,” he says, and sets down the box, crouches to open it. 

“Have you been rearranging in here?” she asks. “I haven’t been able to find anything all day.”

“Oh, yeah, it was delivery day, and I’m just getting time to unpack now,” he explains. “Had to make some room.”

She crosses her arms and keeps scanning the shelves. “Did you move anything to the other fridges?”

“Uh, maybe,” says Brad.

“Well, that’s really confusing,” she says crossly, and she hears the whine in her voice, and hates it. “Because I’ve spent all day trying to find things so you could refrigerate your paper towels.”

Brad stills, she can tell from the corner of her eye, and looks up at her. “They’re not mine, they’re for the whole kitchen,” he says, and Claire wants to scream.

“I just mean—“ she starts, but he cuts her off and stands up.

“It’s not just going to be like this now, right?” Brad asks. 

Claire breathes in sharply and finally turns to meet his gaze. He’s closer than she thought he was, even with the box in between them, and she has to look up to meet his eyes. He spends so much time bent over counters to meet her level that she’s begun to take it for granted. He’s so _tall_ and it never stops surprising her.

“Like what, Brad?” she asks.

He makes a frustrated sound. “Like, weird like this. It doesn’t have to be weird.”

“Nothing’s weird,” she says crossly. “I just left my dough in here to chill and now I can’t find it.”

He’s starting to say something else when the door opens and Chris squeezes in. It’s a big walk in, but with the unpacked groceries, three is pretty tight. “Just need some of that lettuce, one second,” he says, and scoots past Brad, kneels in between them.

“I didn’t move your dough,” Brad finally says over Chris’ head. Claire can _sense_ Chris’ shoulders tighten. “Or the cranberries.”

“Somebody did,” she says, “and _you_ said you rearranged the fridges to make room for the paper towels.”

“Will you leave it with the paper towels, Claire, I didn’t move your dough—”

“Got the lettuce,” says Chris, way too bright, and stands back up. “Just gonna—get by you, Brad—” 

Brad waits until the door is shut again to lean in a little bit, drops his voice. “Claire, I told you I was sorry. I didn’t—but I mean, what did you think we were doing?” She starts to bristle and he backs up, “No, I just mean, it’s the weekend, I hike into the city with a toolbox, that thing gets heavy.”

What did she think they were doing? She thought he was her _friend_ , she thought he was coming over to hang out and futz around with tools, she didn’t realize—if he had just _told_ her—if she had had a chance to think about what he wanted and think about if she wanted it too!

“I didn’t realize it was such an inconvenience for you,” she says, aiming for cold and knowing she misses it by a mile.

“It wasn’t,” he starts, but she presses on.

“And I didn’t realize it was so _transactional_ , what would you have gotten if you _had_ fixed the stupid radiator—” And that’s a whole new path she didn’t mean to take her brain on—if he’d been thinking about kissing her, what else had he been thinking about, she’d kept her bedroom door closed the entire time he was over but what if he’d wanted to see inside?

“Claire, jeez, that’s not how I meant it,” he protests. “It’s not, I mean, it wasn’t that you _owed_ me, obviously, I just mean—I’m not usually that gized about cabinetry, you don’t see me goin’ over and caulking Andy’s bathtub—well, I used grout, not caulk, but—”

“Stop saying caulk,” Claire says automatically. “Sorry I even asked, Brad, you didn’t have to come over and do any of that.”

“ _No_ , Claire, listen,” Brad says, frustrated, “I offered, I wanted to! I wanted—it’s just—”

“It’s what, Brad!” 

“I like fixing a sink if it means I get to talk to you,” he finally says. 

That’s hanging in the air between them when Andy pokes his head in. “Claire! Chris said you were looking for your dough? I moved it to the kitchen fridge on the left, sorry about that!”

Brad’s looking at her, clearly waiting on an answer she just doesn’t have. Claire doesn’t say anything as she squeezes behind him and back out the door. 

\- 

She spends the rest of the afternoon silently trying to rationalize the situation to herself. Brad can’t have wanted it that bad because she didn’t _know_ he wanted it and then he backed up so easily, said _a guy misread_ and went back to fixing things, took it off the table before she even had a _chance_ to say yes—but she _had_ said no, he’d kissed her and she could have said yes but she didn’t say yes because she didn’t know yet how badly she _wanted_ to say yes and then Claire looks up and Carla and Molly are both staring at her and she realizes she has crushed her pesto far beyond a paste and into a consistency she can only describe as a non-Newtonian fluid.

“What!” she says, and they both put their hands up, palms out, an unplanned synchronization of surrender. Claire sighs and steps away from the counter.

-

Her radiator clunks at her when she gets home. “Don’t you even _start,_ ” she snaps at it.

-

She says hello to Brad the next morning, a little cautious, but friendly, trying again to find normal. He likes spending time with her, is what he said, and she likes him, so they can be—they can be something. They can be friends, like normal, at the very least.

Brad smiles but it doesn’t reach his eyes. 

Claire’s heart sinks, she spends all day on autopilot, and she doesn’t say goodnight on her way out.

-

The problem, Claire decides, is that Brad apparently had a head start on thinking about this, thinking about kissing her, because _he_ thought it was obviously going to happen when he came over and _she_ didn’t know it was going to happen until it was happening. She’s been playing catch-up these past few days, though, rewinding and replaying the moment over.

He’d been standing so close to her, and she could have said yes. 

It’s Saturday morning. Claire goes to the hardware store. 

-

“Alright,” she says, sitting cross-legged in front of her radiator, just like Brad did a few weekends back. “We’re doing this.”

“Clank,” says the radiator.

“You and me both,” she says grimly, and, just like Brad suggested, gets in there to see what’s what.

-

She Googles solutions, tries everything that comes up and some things that don’t. She’s been sitting on the floor for ages, her back is hurting, she’s used the radiator key ten times in an hour, and it keeps clanking at her, almost sullenly, like it _knows_ she’s trying to get rid of it.

Part of the problem, too, is that you can’t prove a negative, can’t count on the _absence_ of the clank. Through most of her time sitting on the floor, poking and prodding and feeling increasingly useless, it’s coming steadily enough she knows she hasn’t actually fixed anything yet (and actually is growing concerned she’s just making it worse, maybe even enough worse, _ugh_ , that she’ll actually have to try and bring her landlord in after all). 

No. She’s going to fix this stupid fucking radiator, and it will stop clanking, and it will be good. She’s going to fix the radiator, and then maybe she can fix the moment where Brad kissed her and she said _Oh, no, I mean, no_ because she wasn’t _ready_ , she didn’t _know_ yet.

She knows now. She wants to fix when she yelled at him over the dehydrator. She wants to fix when they were in the walk in and she was so upset about shelf space and he looked at her and saw right through her, told her plainly what he wanted while she covered her ears and walked out the door. She wants her radiator to be quiet and she wants to tell Brad she’s sorry.

Except that—the radiator _is_ quiet, she realizes suddenly.

She scoots back from it, slowly, like it’s an animal that will spook if she moves too quickly. She rises to her feet, stretches the ache out of her back, and goes to the kitchen to get some water. Her apartment is silent.

-

“Brad,” Claire says, bursting into the walk-in. He’s got a leek in each hand, and he looks up at her, startled. “I fixed my radiator. It hasn’t clanked all weekend.”

“Oh,” says Brad, “Uh, good for you, Claire. Nice job.”

“No, _listen_ ,” Claire says, lets the door close behind her. There aren’t any boxes taking up the floor space and she’s relieved she doesn’t have to clamber over anything to get to him. “I fixed my radiator!”

“Yeah, I heard, you said,” he says, and she doesn’t know how to make him _get_ it, make him hear that her _job_ is to keep trying things that feel hopeless until they don’t feel hopeless anymore, that giving up is the easiest thing but he never really lets her do it, and then because she keeps trying and he’s there if she needs him, she ends up with a perfect New Rochelle Ball or a radiator that doesn’t clank anymore or—

Claire stands on her tiptoes, puts her arms around his neck, and kisses him.

Brad takes a second to get with the program and then kisses her back, big strong arms going around her waist, and she can feel the leeks brushing her arms and so she starts to laugh, helpless, giddy. 

Brad looks dazed. He lets go of her just long enough to set down the leeks, then gets his hands on her hips. “You, uh, you fixed your radiator?” he asks. 

“Silent night over there,” she tells him, and he starts to smile at her, the first real, bright, Brad smile she’s gotten out of him in weeks. He’s sparkling. He’s perfect. She _fixed_ it.

He slides his hands up her hips to her waist, squeezes a little, draws her in close. “So I guess you don’t need me to come back over and take a look at it?”

“I’m sure I can come up with something else for you to do,” she says, and kisses him again.

**Author's Note:**

> a fun thing about this fic is that i've never fixed anything in my life. please do not ask me any questions about radiators. 
> 
> @ the internet, please don't be weird about this (or be very weird but quietly and in confined spaces). standard rules for very niche rpf apply.


End file.
